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In 1982, the International Theatre Institute, working through UNESCO, created International Dance Day, occurring on April 29 each year.  The date recognizes the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre, the originator of modern ballet, who lived from 1727-1810.

            In support of each year’s recognition, a prominent representative of dance pens a message regarding the universality and importance of dance.  For 2019, Karima Mansour, an Egyptian dancer, choreographer and teacher, wrote the message.  She began, “At the beginning there was movement… and since the dawn of time, dance has been a strong means of expression and celebration.”  The popularity of “Dancing with the Stars” proves her message.

            I’d like to interpret the “dawn of time” a bit differently than Ms. Mansour.  Long before humans arrived and ever since, animals have danced as part of their life story.  Dance is so ubiquitous in nature that in 2015 BBC Earth produced a two-part video series about dancing animals. And so, it seems a good time to remind us all that there are some pretty nifty dancers roaming around nature’s ballrooms.

            The competition for best dancers among invertebrates is a hands-down victory for the peacock spider.  The male of this 2-inch Australian species sports a brightly decorated abdomen that it raises and lowers rhythmically to attract mates.  It also raises and lowers its third set of legs in unison, as if waving to say “Hi, wanna come up to my web?”

            All dancing isn’t just for mating.  Verreaux’s sifaka, a lemur endemic to Madagascar, is highly adapted for climbing trees and jumping from one branch to another.  Its long, muscular hind legs and short front legs are ideal for an arboreal habitat.  But the sifaka also travels on the ground, and because its anatomy wouldn’t allow running on all fours, it uses a graceful leaping gait to move along.  Jean-Georges Noverre would love the ballet performed by the dexterous sifaka.

            Several candidates compete for the best aquatic dancers.  The streamlined bodies of humpbacks whales and river otters could get them jobs in an underwater Cirque de Solei.  But the BBC is an unabashed advocate of the mudskipper.  Mudskippers are small fish (about 4 inches long) that live in tidal pools, mangrove swamps and mud flats in Africa and Asia.  More than 30 species exist.  The fish are remarkable because they spend about 75% of their time on land (albeit really wet land); they can absorb oxygen from the air through their mouth and gills and through their moist skin—hence they spend most of their time rolling in the mud.  But when males need to be noticed, they launch themselves into the air, up to 18 inches high, flex their bodies and fall back with a loud thud.  This break-dance move lets females know they are around and ready to bogie!

            The champion animal dancing taxon, however, is unquestionably Aves.  The displays that birds make, separately and in pairs, are the stuff of legends.  The Sage Grouse is considered the best by many observers, as the males puff out their chests, inflating and emptying two inflatable air sacks.  The booming sound fills the lonely prairie, attracting mates from miles around.

            But my money is on the Clark’s Grebe as the winner of Dancing with Nature’s Stars.  These birds pair up for life, and they prove their devotion to each other through an elaborate couple’s dance.  They romp through a variety of steps, often facing each other and performing mirror-image moves—preening feathers, ducking their heads, displaying their head feathers.  But then the action explodes as they race together, side by side, walking—well, dancing—across the water with wings held at an aerodynamic angle.  The dance could be right out of Swan Lake, or at least Grebe Pond!

            Most species do some sort of dance, just like most of us like to cavort around the family room. But some species are truly remarkable, and on a day when we recognize the power of dance to bring joy and meaning, let’s not forget our animal dancers!

References:

BBC.  2015.  Ten dazzling dancers of the animal kingdom.  BBC blog, 26 June 2015.  Available at:  http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150626-animal-dancers-that-dazzle.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

Dunne, Daily.  2018.  Eight of nature’s grooviest dancing animals.  BBC Science Focus, 28 February 2018.  Available at:  https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/eight-of-natures-grooviest-dancing-animals/.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

International Theatre Institute.  International Dance Day.  Available at:  https://www.international-dance-day.org/internationaldanceday.html.  Accessed April 11, 2019.

It took two days before the government of the Soviet Union admitted that something had happened to their nuclear power facilities at Chernobyl.  They might never have admitted anything, if Scandinavian scientists hadn’t begun to detect increased levels of radiation in the air on Monday morning, April 28, 1986.

            What the Soviet Union had to admit, slowly and unwillingly, was that the biggest nuclear accident in history had occurred at Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power station at 1:23 AM two days earlier, on Saturday, April 26.  The plant’s operators were conducting a test to simulate what would happen if the power supply to the plant was reduced.  As the test was proceeding, everything went wrong.  Control rods jammed, and the reactor reached 120 times its full power, blowing the top off the building.  The graphite core started to burn, radioactive steam escaped into the atmosphere, a second explosion occurred.  The fire alarm sounded, and dispatchers begged desperately, “Call everybody, everybody.”

            The fire burned for several days, and radioactive steam, ash and dust continued to fall over an extended area.  Chernobyl is in present-day Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus.  Although the area was somewhat remote, a few nearby towns had developed to serve the nuclear power facilities built there.  A little more than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate the region, resettled elsewhere by the Soviet government.  An area of 1600 square miles, called the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), was emptied of people—and remains virtually empty to this day.

            Most of the evacuated people were fortunate, but others not so.  Two workers in the plant were killed in the explosion.  A total of 134 people developed radiation poisoning, and 28 of those died a few weeks after the explosion.  About 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been diagnosed among adults who were children in the area at the time of the explosion.  Because thyroid cancer is fairly easy to recognize and treat, only 15 deaths have occurred.

            The Chernobyl explosion is, without doubt, among the modern era’s worst human disasters.  But there appears to be a silver lining to the radioactive cloud Chernobyl produced. The CEZ created an accidental protected area for wildlife that exceeds the size of almost all European parks and reserves.  The area that previously held farms, towns and other artifacts of human use is now, in essence, a wilderness area.  Although structures still exist, the habitat is devoid of humans.

            And nature loves it!  Researchers monitoring wildlife populations have seen large increases in population sizes and the return of many species that were rare before the accident.  Ukrainian wildlife researcher Sergey Gaschak said, “We have all large mammals: red deer, roe deer, wild boar, moose, horse, bison, brown bear, lynx, wolves, two species of hare, beaver, otter, badger, some martins, some mink, and polecats.”  Predatory birds have also made major comebacks.  Grazing animals have reached densities similar to those in other wildlife preserves, and wolf densities are seven times higher than in other locations.  The return of growing populations of top predators is particularly noteworthy, because this indicates the health of the entire food chains leading to them.  Radiation does not appear to be building up in the CEZ populations or bio-accumulating up the food chains.

            On particularly interesting experiment is the reintroduction of the endangered Przewalski’s horse.  This is the only un-domesticated species of horse in existence, and until a few years ago existed only in captivity.  Recently, individuals have begun to be released into suitable habitat, including the CEZ in 1998.  Like other species there, this small population appears to be thriving.

            The conclusion, overall, must be that human influences on wildlife are much more serious than exposure to radiation, at least at the levels in the CEZ.  Humans and wildlife compete for habitat—if we get out of the way, the wildlife will come back.  Despite what many people say, nature is not fragile—it is strong and resilient, as long as we give it a chance.

            And here’s another hopeful outcome:  In 2018, a new solar array was constructed at the site of the nuclear accident!

References:

Deryabina, T. G. et al.  2015.  Long-term census data reveal abundant wildlife populations at Chernobyl.  Current Biology 25(19):PR824-PR826.  Available at:  https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)00988-4.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Kaplan, Sarah and Nick Kirkpatrick.  2015.  In the eerie emptiness of Chernobyl’s abandoned towns, wildlife is flourishing.  The Washington Post, October 6, 2015.  Available at:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/06/in-the-eerie-emptiness-of-chernobyls-abandoned-towns-wildlife-is-flourishing/?utm_term=.dc79645be390.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

The Chernobyl Gallery.  Timeline.  Available at:  http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline/.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Wendle, John.  2016.  Animals Rule Chernobyl Three Decades After Nuclear Disaster.  National Geographic, April 18, 2016.  Available at:  https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

World Nuclear Association.  2018.  Chernobyl Accident 1986.  Available at:  http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx.  Accessed April 10, 2019.

Normally I would title an entry like this one with the current name of the agency or park under discussion.  But today I’ve used the original name—Soil Conservation Service—because it represents more directly the nature of the agency.  Today, the agency is called the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a nice name but much more ambiguous than the original.

            In the early decades of the 20^th Century, American agriculture was developing rapidly, aimed at feeding a growing nation and supporting the food needs of servicemen fighting in Europe during World War I.  One consequence was cultivating land that never should have been farmed in the Great Plains; another was damage to the soils of farmland that was overused and improperly managed.  Soil erosion was rampant and crop yields were declining.

            A young North Carolina soil scientist, Hugh Hammond Bennett (1881-1960), saw the damage as he worked on soil surveys for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  When Bennett attended Teddy Roosevelt’s 1908 Governors’ Conference on Conservation, he heard a presentation on soil degradation that cemented his “determination to pursue that subject to some possible point of counteraction.”

            Bennett wrote continually about soil erosion in scientific journals and popular magazines, warning about the dangers of soil damage.  He gained national attention when he co-authored a USDA bulletin, stating his opinion “that soil erosion is the biggest problem confronting the farmers of the Nation….”  At his urging, some funds were allocated from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to address soil issues. The Department of the Interior created a small Soil Erosion Service in 1933 and put Bennett in charge. Bennett used the position to his advantage, lobbying Congress about soil.  He was a compelling witness, once pouring water on a conference table to show Congress how soil erosion occurs. 

            When serious droughts created the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s, Bennett pressed the need for soil conservation.  He testified before Congress in spring, 1935, while dust storms passed through Washington, DC, darkening the skies and clouding the congressional chambers.  Then the biggest dust storm in history swept across the Great Plains on April 14, causing many to believe that the end of the world was upon them.  He used these storms to argue his point—successfully.  On April 27, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Soil Conservation Act, creating the Soil Conservation Service (SCS).  Bennett became director, a position he held for the next 16 years and earning him the name “father of soil conservation.”

            The SCS began immediately to help farmers protect their soil.  It offered expert advice and provided funding for soil protection actions like building farm ponds to raise the water table and planting tree shelterbelts to slow down wind erosion.  The work was organized around “soil conservation districts,” local groups made up of elected representatives of farmers, ranchers and timber owners.  The operating scale of work was the small watershed, a concept that was meaningful for soil protection, logical to landowners and practical for funding.

            In the 82 years since the agency’s founding, the work has grown in both scope and scale.  Activities now address biodiversity conservation, recreational access, management of suburban watersheds and many other topics.  Hence, in 1994, the agency’s name changed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), designated as the principal point of conservation for USDA.

          

Today, NRCS has a approximately $5 billion annual budget and employs about 12,000 people who work in 2900 offices around the country, generally focused on one or a few counties.  Local conservation districts, which now have a variety of names, number almost 3,000, about one for every county in the nation.  They are represented by the National Association of Conservation Districts, whose mission is “to promote the wise and responsible use of natural resources for all lands by representing locally-led conservation districts and their associations through grassroots advocacy, education and partnerships.”

            Let’s give Hugh Hammond Bennett the last words:  “Take care of the land and the land will take care of you….”

References:

National Association of Conservation Districts.  About NACD.  Available at:  https://www.nacdnet.org/about-nacd/.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

NRCS.  Hugh Hammond Bennet.  Available at:  https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/about/history/?cid=stelprdb1044395.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

NRCS.  More Than 80 Years Helping People Hel the Land:  A Brief History of NRCS.  Available at:  https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/national/about/history/?cid=nrcs143_021392.  Accessed April 9, 2019.

When Teddy Roosevelt, 26^th President of the United States, died on January 6, 1919, it wasn’t long before conservationists began advocating for a park in his name.  Roosevelt was, after all, our “conservation president,” a leader who established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks and 18 national monuments encompassing 230 million acres in all.  But it did not prove easy to get a park named for him.

            As a young man, Roosevelt traveled to the Dakota Territory for a hunting trip in 1883.  He fell in love with the land and with the idea of being a rancher.  That year, he bought one ranch and a second one the next year.  For the next several years, he visited the area often to manage his ranches and enjoy the western lifestyle.  The work toughened him and convinced him that he could do anything. “I never would have been President if it had not been for my experiences in North Dakota,” Roosevelt said later.

            It seemed logical, then, that a park dedicated to Roosevelt’s conservation heritage be created in North Dakota.  In 1921, North Dakota asked Congress to create such a park, and by 1924 a park association formed in the state to promote the idea.  The National Park Service didn’t think the area deserved a national park, but agreed, in 1928, to propose a small national monument as a tribute to Roosevelt.  Some action began in the 1930s, when the same extended drought that created the Dust Bowl (learn more about the Dust Bowl here) caused North Dakota farmers and ranchers to abandon their lands.  The U.S. government bought back millions of acres and created the Little Missouri National Grasslands on the North Dakota-Montana border. 

            A portion of the grasslands was put into a cooperative park venture among several federal and state agencies, and, by 1935, a Roosevelt Recreation Demonstration Area was established.  But when a permanent home for a park was sought, neither the State of Nork Dakota nor the National Park Service wanted to take responsibility.  After World War 2 ended, the National Park Service again declined to take on the property, declaring that it was not worthy of national park status.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ended up with the land, designating it a national wildlife refuge.  But with the aggressive and persistent lobbying of North Dakota Congressman William Lemke, Congress passed and President Truman signed, on April 25, 1947, a law creating Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park.  Thirty-one years later, on November 10, 1978, President Carter signed the law that dropped “memorial” from the name and finally made it official—Teddy Roosevelt finally had his national park, nearly 60 years after his death.

            Three separate units comprise the park.  The majority of the park’s 70,447 acres are in the South Unit (about 46,000 acres) and North Unit (about 24,000 acres).  Between these units is the Elkhorn Ranch Unit of 218 acres, one of the two original ranches owned by Teddy Roosevelt.  No area of the park is highly developed, with only primitive campsites, hiking trails and scenic drives, but the Elkhorn unit is kept purposely undeveloped to represent the rugged wildness of Roosevelt’s time.  Visitation to the park is relatively low, averaging about 500,000 per year for several decades but recently reaching about 750,000.

            The park, therefore, retains the character that Roosevelt loved about the West.  It is about nature—rugged, beautiful, an island of solitude.  And it reminds us that taking care of such places is a solemn duty.  As Roosevelt said in 1910,

“There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.”

References:

National Park Service.  Park History, Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  Available at:  https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/park-history.htm.  Accessed April 8, 2019.

U.S. Department of the Interior.  2016.  The Conservation Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt.  USDOI blog, 10/27/2016.  Available at:  https://www.doi.gov/blog/conservation-legacy-theodore-roosevelt.  Accessed April 8, 2019. 

Normally, this calendar notes the birth dates of important conservationists and environmentalists.  But today is noted because it was the date when three famous authors died—William Shakespeare, Miquel de Cervantes, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.  Not only did they die on the same date, April 23, but they all died on the very same day, April 23, 1616.

            The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) chose to acknowledge their deaths and the foundational value of books to our civilization by creating World Book and Copyright Day in 1995.  The current Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, represented the importance of books this way:

“When we celebrate books, we celebrate activities – writing, reading, translating, publishing – which help individuals to raise and fulfil themselves; and we celebrate, in a fundamental way, the freedoms that make them possible. Books are at the intersection of some of the most essential human freedoms, primarily freedom of expression and freedom to publish. These are fragile freedoms. Faced by many challenges, from the questioning of copyright and cultural diversity to the physical threats looming over authors, journalists and publishers in many countries, these freedoms are also denied, even today, when schools are attacked, and manuscripts and books destroyed.”

So, I thought today was a good time to remind us all of those conservation and environmental books that have had huge influences on our approach to sustainability.  In the late 1990s, an internet book review service asked a variety of people—writers, reporters, professors and plain readers—what environmental books they thought most influential. 

            Guess what?  The number one most influential book, mentioned by 83% of respondents, was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring! (learn more about her)  Not surprised, are you?  At number two was the annual State of the World books produced by the Worldwatch Institute.  Third was Soft Energy Paths, by Amory Lovins.  A whole shelf could be covered by Amory Lovins’ contributions to sustainable energy (learn more about him).  Fourth was Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism, a book that discusses how our economic systems are dependent on nature systems. Another Hawken book, The Ecology of Commerce, came in at sixth.

            What about fifth place?  You’ve been waiting for this—Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac (learn more about him).  When first published in 1949, this book was pretty much overlooked, but it became a popular classic—the environmental equivalent of the Bible—when published as a paperback in the 1970s.

            There appear to be as many lists of great environmental books as there are environmental books!  Some cover all time, some just one year.  But going farther back than the 20^th Century, and farther forward as well, a couple of clear winners need to be mentioned.  Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was probably an early inspiration for many of us who love nature.  And Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance had a substantial influence on modern public policy on the environment.

            Each of us could provide our own list of those books that made us sit up and take notice.  Does yours include Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax? (learn more about the book) Or perhaps Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, the book that scared most of us in 1969, when it appeared.  My desire to be in nature as much as possible came early from Jean Craighead George’s  young adult adventure story, My Side of the Mountain.  And reading Rachel Carson’s The Edge of the Sea set me firmly on the path to a career as a fisheries biologist.

            As I look at the book shelves around me as I write this calendar entry, I see many others that are special to me.  Stewart Udall’s The Quiet Crisis, about our need to protect nature areas as parks (learn more about him).  Our Common Future, the report of Gro Harlem Brundtland’s World Commission on Environment and Development (learn more about her).  Gifford Pinchot’s The Fight for Conservation.  The poems of Robert Service.

            But the content of my bookshelf is not the point.  The point is that I have a bookshelf, full of books that influenced me as a conservationist.  And so do you.  This is not something we should take for granted.  Freedom of expression, through a free and open press, is essential to a civilization, especially one that needs to grow and change to make a better, more sustainable world.

            When the Capital One commercial asks, “What’s in your wallet,” I hope that, like me, you want to shout, “My library card!”

References:

UNESCO.  World Book and Copyright Day.  Available at:  https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldbookday.  Accessed April 5, 2019.

Watters, Ron.  The Reviewer’s Ten Most Influential Environmental Books of the 20^th Century.  Available at:  http://www.ronwatters.com/BkTheRev.htm.  Accessed April 5, 2019.

I’ve searched the internet from stem to stern, consulted all my reference sources—and I can find nothing of calendar-worthy significance that has occurred on April 8.  I can’t even find anything remotely amusing that I can try to connect to conservation.  But in looking just a little farther, I found something perhaps minor, but also perhaps eminently deserving of note for April 8.

            On April 8 of four recent years—1980, 1987, 2003 and 2004—five species were added to the U.S. Endangered Species List.  A database for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tabulates all the species on the list, by the year in which each was added.  Look at any particular year’s table, and you can see the date when each ofl the species for that year was added.  It’s a tedious process, looking through 42 years worth of entries, but it can be done.

            And April 8 has five hits.  The Kern primose sphinx moth was added in 1980.  It lives in only a few locations in one county of California’s Central Valley, threatened by massive land-use changes and pesticide use in agricultural fields.  The Waccamaw silverside is a small minnow (is that redundant?) added to the list in 1987.  It lives in just one lake in far southeastern North Carolina.  It is very abundant in the lake, but found nowhere else on earth.

            Three plant species completed the April 8 entries.  The Scotts Valley polygonum was added in 2003.  It is a tiny plant, only a few inches tall, that grows in one place, Scotts Valley of Santa Cruz County, California.  It is being squeezed out of its habitat by human development.  The other two plants, both listed in 2004, live on the Northern Marianna Islands, a U.S. territory in the South Pacific.  They are so rare that they don’t even have common names.  They are threatened, once again, by human development, but also by typhoons that can wipe out the species instantaneously—and which are becoming more frequent.

            None of these species is particularly noteworthy.  None would fit into the category of “charismatic megafauna” (or flora, as the case may be).  Few people have probably even heard of them, other than those that live near their habitats and have been impacted by their listing.  Or those few entomologists, ichthyologists and botanists who study them for a living.

            But that is also what makes them so spectacularly noteworthy.  No, not necessarily the species themselves (yes, I fully understand that every species is valuable), but the law that protects them.  The U.S. Endangered Species Act protects our biodiversity whether or not the particular biodiversity subject is big, bold and beautiful.  “The List,” maintained by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries, contains 1663 domestic species.  The vast majority of those are just like the five that made it to the list on various April 8s..  They are inconspicuous and found in limited locations.  They don’t make news, the Supreme Court doesn’t rule on their status, hardly anyone takes notice.

            Our laws do, however, at both federal and state levels.  A bunch of smart and dedicated public servants keep us honest when it comes to our biodiversity.  In the 1970s, politicians passed the laws that now protect us—wise politicians who voted their consciences, not their party loyalties, to make the right things happen.  Biologists in local, state and federal agencies work every day, at marginal salaries and subject to inane government shutdowns, to discover, list, recover and de-list these species. 

            So, on this insignificant date of April 8, let us remember, through the five species that we chose to protect on this date, that all endangered and threatened species deserve our protection.  And so do the laws and people who make that protection happen.  Five, not three, cheers for April 8!

References:

California Department of Fish and Wildlife.  Scotts Valley Polygonum.  Available at:  https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Plants/Endangered/Polygonum-hickmanii.  Accessed April 3, 2019.

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.  Waccamaw Silverside.  Available at:  https://www.ncwildlife.org/Learning/Species/Fish/Waccamaw-Silverside#2527742-regulationspermits.  Accessed April 3, 2019.

USFWS.  U.S. Federal Endangered and Threatened Species by Calendar Year.  Available at:  https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp0/reports/species-listings-count-by-year-report.  Accessed April 3, 2019.

USFWS, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office.  Kern Primrose Sphinx Moth.  Available at:  https://www.fws.gov/sacramento/es_species/Accounts/Invertebrates/kern_primrose_sphinx/.  Accessed April 3, 2019. US Federal Register.  2007. Recovery Plan for Two Plants From Rota (Nesogenes rotensis and Osmoxylon mariannense).  Available at:  https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/05/03/07-2179/recovery-plan-for-two-plants-from-rota-nesogenes-rotensis-and-osmoxylon-mariannense.  Accessed April 3, 2019

For much of history, insects were considered “beasts of the devil” and therefore were not studied.  This began to change in the 1600s, when a few conscientious observers of nature decided to turn their attention to insects.  One of the first—and foremost—was a German woman, Maria Sibylla Merian.

            Merian was born on April 2, 1647, in Frankfurt, Germany (died 1717).  Her father was a famous engraver who died when she was three.  Her mother remarried, this time to the equally famous painter Jacob Marrel.  Marrel painted still-lifes, and the young Merian collected specimens, both plants and insects, as subjects for his work.  She fell in love with nature, particularly insects.  She wrote that she “spent my time investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my home town of Frankfurt. I realized that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed.”

            Under her step-father’s tutelage, she learned to draw and paint as both a scientist and artist. Her preferred medium was watercolor, standard for women at the time.  She painted plants at first, publishing her first “Book of Flowers “in 1675, at the age of 28; two more volumes followed in rapid succession.  She included insects in many of her botanical paintings, as addition decoration. 

            But soon she switched the nature of her compositions to emphasize insects.  Through her careful field observations, she had learned that caterpillars went through various stages—from egg to pupae to butterflies or moths.  She drew all the life stages of a species in one painting, adding in the plants upon which each life stage depended.  The results were not only artistically compelling, but they presented a new scientific perspective on the lives of insects.  Before Merian’s works were published, insects were thought to arise from spontaneous creation, out of the soil.  Her books on caterpillars, which were first published in 1678, dispelled that notion.

            Merian had moved to Amsterdam with her husband and two daughters, and she become intrigued with the news of expeditions returning from the Dutch colony of Suriname in South America.  She viewed many collections, noting that “in these collections I had found innumerable other insects, but finally if here their origin and their reproduction is unknown, it begs the question as to how they transform, starting from caterpillars and chrysalises and so on. All this has, at the same time, led me to undertake a long dreamed of journey to Suriname.”

            With the sponsorship of the Amsterdam city government, she and her younger daughter, also an artist, embarked in 1699 on a planned five-year expedition to Suriname.  They collected, observed and drew plants and insects across the region. She eventually painted 60 species of insects, following their life histories from stage to stage.  She also took up the cause of treatment of natives and slaves, complaining that they were abused by Dutch plantation owners. Merian contracted malaria in 1701 and had to return to Amsterdam after just two years. 

            In 1705, she published a book entitled “The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname.”  This work was the most important of her career.  As one of the first illustrated accounts of the natural history of Suriname, it greatly advanced the knowledge of New World insects and plants.  She became famous among both artists and scientists for the beauty and technical accuracy of her work.  After her death in 1717, the Tsar of Russia, Peter I, purchased all her drawings, plates and printed works.  They remain today as part of the Hermitage’s art inventory.

            Merian holds a place among the most important naturalists of the 18^th Century.  Throughout her life, she described and painted the life cycles of 186 insects and published many scientific books.  The value of her work has been re-emphasized in recent years, in connection with public recognition of the 300^th anniversary of her publications and here 1717 death.  She has been featured on German currency and stamps, and a oceanographic research ship is named after her. 

References:

History of Scientific Women.  Anna Maria Sibylla Merian.  Available at:  https://scientificwomen.net/women/merian-anna_maria_sibylla-67.  Accessed April 2, 2019.

National Library of The Netherlands.  Maria Sibylla Merian.  Available at:  http://www.sibyllamerian.com/biography.html.  Accessed April 2, 2019

Rogers, Kara.  2019.  Maria Sibylla Merian.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Mar 29, 2019.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maria-Sibylla-Merian.  Accessed April 2, 2019.

Wangari Maathai accomplished much in her life.  Most would list her selection as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate as her greatest accomplishment.  But I think what earned her the prize is much more notable:  Wangari Maathai planted 50 million trees!

            Wangari Muta was born on April 1, 1940, in a small rural village in central Keny (died 2011).  She was a true “child of the soil,” as she liked to say.  Born into a farming family, she learned to tend the soil, crops and livestock to help feed her family.  She loved life on the farm, and the spiritual way her family regarded their productive environment, noting that “My mother told me very clearly … that I was never to collect twigs for firewood from around the fig tree near our homestead since, she said, it was a tree of God.”

            One day, when her brother asked why he went to school and Wangari did not, her mother had no good answer.  So Wangari went to school—and she never stopped.  She excelled at all her schoolwork, finishing high school in Kenya.  Then she was fortunate to be chosen for a program that took promising Kenyan students to the U..S. for college.  She studied biology in Kansas and then earned a M.S. degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

            When she returned to Kenya in the mid-1960s, she became a veterinary instructor, later professor and department head; she married and had two children.  As part of her work, she surveyed cattle diseases in rural Kenya.  The land she found was entirely different from the home she had left years earlier.  Subsistence farms had been replaced by corporate tea and lumber plantations, and the farmers had become day laborers, working for wages and buying their food at the store.  They were poor, malnourished and hopeless.

            Maathai was determined to do something about this situation.  She decided that she would teach rural women to plant, nurture and sustainably harvest native trees—because, she said, “You don’t need a degree to plant a tree.”  She worked with small groups of rural women in first one village, then another, and then another.  Soon, her program, which she called the Green Belt Movement, was fielding requests from throughout Kenya to help start tree nurseries and forests.  She continued working with these small groups, teaching them to grow trees and, at the same time, teaching them about self-reliance and the power of democracy.

            Although popular with some people, her movement was not popular with others.  Her husband divorced her because she was too independent.  The government did not like the attention she was receiving and the anti-government causes she was leading.  Maathai recounted that Kenya’s president, Daniel Moi thought “if I was to be a proper woman in the African tradition—I should respect men and be quiet.”  She was arrested several times; once she signed her arrest warrant with the blood running down her heard from being beaten.

            One of her crusades was to protect Uhuru Park in downtown Nairobi.  Like Central Park in New York City, Uhuru Park was (and is, thanks to Maathai) a place for the general public to enjoy a bit of green space in the midst of a big city.  President Moi decided to build a skyscraper and a monument to himself in the park, but Maathai led protests that led to the collapse of Moi’s plan.  For this, Maathai became the subject of assassination plots that kept her living in hiding for months at a time.  But she persevered and triumphed—a sign in the park still commemorates “Freedom Corner” in her honor.

            But action, not honor, was Maathai’s mission.  She continued working with groups of rural Kenyan women until she had achieved a miraculous outcome—she and her groups planted 50 million trees!  She also helped plant tens of millions of trees in adjacent countries which were never counted.  She did all this work without the backing of large conservation or aid organizations, instead working out of her home with a small dedicated band of staff and volunteers.

            When the call came in 2004 announcing her as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she was enroute to an event at a rural Kenyan hotel.  By the time she arrived, word had already reached the hotel, and a large group of people were waiting to cheer her.  As she greeted them, one person asked how they might honor her award.  She said, “Can someone bring me a shovel?  Let’s plant a tree!”

Reference:

Nielsen, Larry A.  2017.  Nature’s Allies—8 Conservationists Who Changed Our World.  Island Press, Washington, DC.  255 pages.

One can get an argument about who is the greatest environmental U.S. president—maybe Teddy Roosevelt, maybe Richard Nixon, maybe even Abraham Lincoln.  But there can’t be much argument about the greatest environmental vice president.  Or perhaps, it is best to say the greatest environmentalist to become vice president—Al Gore.

            Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. was born on March 31, 1948.  Because his father was a U.S. representative, the young Gore was born and raised in Washington, DC.  He spent summers on the family farm in Tennessee.  He graduated from Harvard and then served in the U.S. Army, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam.  On his return from military service, he worked as a reporter and later enrolled in law school.

            But he quit law school to enter politics.  He served Tennessee as a Congressional Representative for four terms, from 1976 to 1984.  He then moved on to the Senate, serving from 1984 to 1992, when he became the Democratic candidate for vice president, running with Bill Clinton.  He was elected twice, serving as vice president from 1992 to 2000.  He ran for president in 2000, but lost in the highly controversial election of George W. Bush.

            Throughout his political career, Gore was an advocate for environmental sustainability.  He held the first congressional hearings on human-induced climate change in 1981.  As a senator, he pushed for a Global Marshall Plan that would address the earth’s environmental problems and solutions.  As vice president, he led efforts for climate change mitigation and for global education on environmental matters.   Through the National Academy of Sciences, he procured a NASA program to launch a satellite capable of detecting global air pollution and climate changes.  He led the Senate’s delegation to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and he signed the U.S. commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on Ozone-depletion in 1997.

            He wrote his first book about climate change, “Earth in the Balance:  Ecology and the Human Spirit,” in 1992.  In 2006, he produced a documentary film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” based on a slide show he had prepared and shown earlier to audiences around the country and world.  The film won the Oscar for best documentary.  Gore’s first book and film made him a leading figure in the environmental movement across the world.  So much so that in 2007, Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.  The Nobel Committee cited both “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

            Gore has not slowed down since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.  He has written four more books about the environment, focusing mostly on climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation.  He advised former President Barack Obama on climate and environmental matters, leading to the U.S. leadership of the Paris climate agreement (read about the Paris Agreement here).  He created a series of concerts to raise global awareness of climate change; the concerts brought together 150 famous performers in concerts in 30 countries, reaching 2 billion people in total.  He founded and provided major funding for the Climate Reality Project, which empowers “everyday people to become activists, equipped with the tools, training, and network to fight for solutions and drive change planet-wide.”  The project boasts 19,000 climate leaders in more than 150 countries.

            Gore continues to have an important role, speaking environmental truth to the rich and powerful, as well as expanding the general understanding of climate change issues.  He remains optimistic—politicians, business leaders and the public in general seem to be getting the message.  And he encourages us to be just as passionate and persistent:  “Believe in the power of your own voice.  The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.”

References:

Aldred, Jessica and Laulren Goodchild.  2007.  Timeline:  Al Gore.  The Guardian, 12 Oct 2007.  Available at:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/oct/12/climatechange1.  Accessed March 29, 2019.

Climate Reality Project.  Our Mission.  Available at:  https://www.climaterealityproject.org/our-mission.  Accessed March 29, 20o19.

Climate Reality Project.  2015.  Ten Times Al Gore Inspired Us to Act on Climate.  Available at:  https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/ten-times-al-gore-inspired-us-act-climate.  Accessed March 29, 2019.

Al Gore.  Climate Leadership.  Available at:  https://www.algore.com/about/the-climate-crisis.  Accessed March 29, 2019.

Nobel Organization.  The Nobel Peace Prize 2007.  Available at:  https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2007/summary/.  Accessed March 29, 2019.

If you were given the chance to buy land at 30 cents per acre, would you?  Me, too, even if those acres were far away.  The U.S. said yes to that decision about 150 years ago, when it bought Alaska from the Russians.  The purchase price was actually $7.2 million, or 2 cents per acre (which equates to $113 million, or 30 cents per acre in today’s money).

            Many people at the time questioned the purchase, however, because the land was so far away and so cold.  The editor of the New York Tribune said Alaska would be a “burden…not worth taking as a gift.”  Detractors called it President “Johnson’s Polar Bear Garden.”  But Johnson’s Secretary of State, William Seward, was adamant that Alaska was a great purchase, declaring that “Our population is destined to roll resistless waves to the ice barriers of the north….”  Years after the purchase, doubters called the Alaska purchase “Seward’s Folly.”

            Why did Russia give the U.S. such a deal?  Fundamentally, Russia was broke, and it couldn’t afford to keep up a presence so far away from its homeland.  Russia had sought the territory for its rich fur resources and as a foothold on the North American continent.  But when the fur trade declined because sea otters had been vastly overharvested, Russia decided to cut its losses and accept a deal with the U.S.  On March 30, 1867, Seward and the Russian ambassador to the U.S. signed the sales agreement.  $7.2 million in gold for 370 million acres—the size of Alaska, California and Montana combined.

            Let’s be clear, however, that neither Russia nor the U.S. “owned” Alaska.  Native Americans had lived there for more than 13,000 years, the earliest human settlers on the continent.  When Russians first landed in Alaska, the state was home to 100,000 native people.  Russian explorers and settlers killed, enslaved and exploited Native Americans, reducing the population by half.  The U.S. did little better when it took over, working for decades to eliminate native culture and lifestyles.

            Fortunately, in the 20^th Century, a variety of laws improved conditions for Alaska’s Native Americans.  The law that made Alaska a state in 1959 also recognized Native American’s rights to land they claimed—creating a new problem because Native Alaskans claimed all of Alaska.  That dilemma was resolved in the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, that allocated 44 million acres and $1 billion to native peoples.  Now we celebrate the native cultures, helping 20 native languages survive and spread.

            And Seward’s purchase has turned out to be quite the opposite of a “folly.”  When gold was discovered in Alaska in 1896, the resulting gold rush proved Seward a genius, not a spendthrift.  When oil reserves were discovered on Alaska’s North Slope in 1968, a new “oil rush” began, resulting in the  building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline that has provided more than 17 billion barrels of oil over the past half century (read about the pipeline here).

            But it is Alaska’s renewable resources that are the real treasures and our delights as conservtionists.  The biggest industry in the state is the capture and processing of marine seafood—salmon, halibut, crab and many other species.  Alaskan waters provide over 5 billion pounds of seafood annually, valued at nearly $2 billion.  Wildlife is equally dramatic—98% of all brown bears live in the state, along with 31 other carnivores.  The federal government owns about 60% of Alaska, held as National Park Service units (48 million acres), Fish and Wildlife Service refuges (71), Forest Service national forests (20) and Bureau of Land Management multiple use lands (78).  Alaska’s 34,000 miles of coastline (more than the rest of the country combined) are breathlessly beautiful.  Nearly 2 million visitors travel to Alaska annually to see “America’s wilderness,” a $2 billion industry.

            Seward made a great purchase for the U.S., and let us hope that it stays a wild place for ever.  But perhaps we should all follow the advice of John Muir, who I paraphrase here:  Never go to Alaska as a young person because you’ll never be satisfied with any other place as long as you live (learn more about Muir here). 

References:

Alaska Department of Natural Resources.  2000.  Land Ownership in Alaska.  Available at:  http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/factsht/land_fs/land_own.pdf.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

Bobbe, Sarah.  2018.  Alaska! Fun Facts about the Land, Oceans and People of our Nation’s Only Arctic State.  Ocean Conservancy, October 17, 2018.  Available at:  https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2018/10/17/alaska-fun-facts-land-oceans-people-nations-arctic-state/?ea.tracking.id=19HPXGJAXX&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8bPTo-Ci4QIV__7jBx2aQQ1-EAAYASAAEgK42_D_BwE.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

Greenspan, Jesse.  2017.  Why the Purchase of Alaska Was Far From “Folly.”  History, March 30, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.history.com/news/why-the-purchase-of-alaska-was-far-from-folly.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

Hensley, William L. Iggiargruk.  2017.  There Are Two Version of the Story of How the U.S. Purchased Alaska From Russia.  Smithsonian, March 29, 2017.  Available at:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-russia-gave-alaska-americas-gateway-arctic-180962714/.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

McDowell Group.  2017.  Alaska Visitor Statistics Program.  Available at:  https://www.alaskatia.org/marketing/AVSP%20VII/1.%20AVSP%207%20Executive%20Summary.pdf.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

McDowell Group.  2017.  The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry.  Available at:  https://www.alaskaseafood.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/AK-Seadfood-Impacts-Sep2017-Final-Digital-Copy.pdf.  Accessed March 27, 2019.

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.  Purchase of Alaska, 1867.  Available at:  https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/alaska-purchase.  Accessed March 27, 2019.